Scarlet
by Anticipating Boxes
Summary: It's a new kidnap with a new kind of plan. Sam wants an accomplice of his own and is unwilling to trust finding the right kind of demon. So with 'human' as a prerequisite, the boys are forced to get creative. Serial killer AU, sequel to Angelface.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N**: First up - this is the sequel/continuation of ANGELFACE, so if you want to know more about the origin story I suggest you read that first. This story can be read as a stand-alone, though some small references may not make as much sense.

This is an Alternate Universe, a 'darkfic', and a minefield of shoddy psychological torture. I hold no degrees, I just think way too much about how to crack people's heads open.

_The story is inspired indirectly by toasters._

* * *

It's obscenely easy to kidnap Ruby Fields (and what the hell kind of a dumb, sinfully appropriate sort of name is that anyway?). They rented a house in a run down neighbourhood that wouldn't care much about the goings on of three men who dressed casual and appeared to have nothing of value, carefully setting it up 'her' room so that blankets lined the walls three deep to block out sound from the inside. Then the Winchesters didn't leave the house for three days, holing up with psychology textbooks and sheets of paper with scribbled-out ideas.

Castiel took that time to clean up the house, leaving to run essential errands and to slowly stock up on things that would be suspicious if bought in large quantities. When Dean instructed him to come back with twenty cans of shredded tomato and a dozen bottles of red wine, he just rolled his eyes and blandly told the surprised girl at the cash register that it was none of her business why he needed so much of each.

Eventually the brothers had settled on a course of action and that was when the stalking began. The three of them took overlapping shifts, each of them spending a third of the day watching her or her house. Castiel took from midnight to nine in the morning, which meant he saw Sam - who took the 'morning' shift - for only a few hours each day. The hour overlapping between Dean's shift and his was often spent in the back seat of the impala, paying only vague attention to what went on in the house and giving each other barely-there bruises that had faded by the time it was midnight again.

"How many times have you done this before?" Cas asks, straddling Dean's thighs in the back seat of the impala.

"What? Fucked you? Fucked a man?"

"Kidnapped people."

"Christ, I dunno..." Dean shrugs. "Four, five times...?"

"That's all."

"Yeah. We don't do the whole kidnapping thing too often, Cas." Dean grunts, shifting his grip on the other man's hips. "Why are we talking about this, angelface? We've only got an hour here."

"I want to know." Castiel leans back to look at his green-eyed lover, a curious tilt to his head. "Tell me what happened."

Seeing the stubborn tilt to the other man's chin, Dean sighs and slumps back against the back seat. "First time was when Sam was eighteen. We picked up a girl named Cassie on the road. She was a hitchhiker and we were bored, so we kinda just drove past where she wanted to go and that was that. She was, uh... quick."

"You killed her."

"Yeah... Then there was this Jess chick. Sam thought she was pretty, so we tailed her and did the whole thing proper. Wore her down a bit until she thought if she just played along for a while we'd let her go. She didn't last, Cas."

"And then?"

"Shit, angelface, I dunno. Some other girl. Brown hair, pretty eyes. We took her interstate and had to dump her when she tried to get away at a rest stop. Then," Dean finishes, "there was you."

"I am your only success story," Castiel smiles slightly, leaning in to press his lips against Dean's. His hands press against Dean's shoulders and the murderer smiles, thinking about the truth of that statement. It was proof of his success right there, that Cas could be sitting on his lap, talking about girls he's killed while stalking a young woman who would soon become number five. It was proof enough that Cas was even just sitting on his lap.

"Success with a fucking razor," Dean chuckles, "I don't even know what we did right with you."

Cas doesn't seem to have an answer for that and instead the last half hour before Dean has to leave is spent in a more productive means than just talking.

* * *

Ruby's routine is quickly mapped out between the three of them. She has a few deviations, but for the most part keeps to the same places. They figure she's most vulnerable in the half hour between when she gets home and when her roommate finishes work. On Wednesdays, they decide, when her closest neighbours - the ones who aren't stoners - go out to an early dinner with their in laws.

Cas elects to stay at the house and make the final preparations for Ruby's stay. The brothers are better at actually keeping people alive anyway, and he suspects her struggles would make him want to slice her throat open. Since that's not the objective, he decides it's better that he doesn't come along.

Ruby fights like a natural scrapper, on the defensive from the moment she saw that Sam had her cornered in her own hallway. She has her mouth open to scream when Dean pounces from where he'd been hiding in the bathroom, quickly wrapping his arms around her and pinning her hands to her sides. She kicks out when Sam approaches, one of her feet actually hitting his thigh, just a bit to the left of where she'd been aiming.

Sam looks down at himself, then back up at her. He grins. She screams, but one of his big hands is covering her mouth before she can even get the sound out. She thrashes in Dean's grip, shaking her head from side to side, kicking her legs, hands searching for places to scratch or pinch. Sam almost breaks the needle as it pushes into her arm where her straining muscles have made her veins easier to see.

She fights the drugs too, struggling to keep her eyes open. Eventually she droops, eyelids mostly closed, body limp. The brothers waste no time in wrapping her up in rope and duct tape, then bundle her into the car.

"Dude, you picked a fighty one," Dean says, casually driving away from the now empty house.

"This might work," Sam muses. "If she can learn to trust us, it might work."

"Or you could just do what I suggested and find a demon to stick in her."

"Dean, I'm not going to pin everything on happening to find a demon with some kind of kinky fetish."

"Your loss, Sammy. This way's going to take longer."

Privately, Sam thinks this way might be better.

They strap her into the chair while she's still unconscious, feet tied to the legs so she can't go anywhere, hands strapped to the armrests. They'd picked a hard-backed wooden chair so it would be difficult to sleep and hammered in a couple of nails through the back so that they'd poke her if she got too relaxed.

The only feature in the otherwise soundproof room was the TV. A huge flat screen that they'd put on top of a plain black box. An extension cord connected it to a DVD player outside the room, and a huge stack of disks sat innocently beside it. They were going to try something new this time.

Ruby was undressed, stripped down to nothing but her underwear. She was gagged, but only with a soft gag that would hinder, but not completely eliminate, her ability to make noise. The point of the gag was so she couldn't annoy them with complaints, the padded walls would stop the neighbours from noticing what was going on. The window had been blacked out. The light would never be switched on.

Sam turned the TV on and shut the door to the room. He put a DVD into the player and flicked the switch. When Ruby came to it would be to an otherwise pitch black soundproof room and a massive TV playing reruns of old fashioned heavy-on-violence cartoons.

The process would be slow, he knew, but if it worked... If it worked at all, it would just be perfect.

* * *

They rig their own schedules so that there's always someone home and watchful, attentive to Ruby's more human needs. They've decided she'll be pampered - comparatively - with regular bathroom breaks and enough food and water to sate hunger, if not desire for taste.

The bathroom across the hall is specifically broken in to see to her needs - the window barred and boarded, all sharp objects removed. Ruby is a fighter, but no match for any of them. She has a desperate ferocity, but no discipline, no real drive behind the thrash.

In those first few days Sam had the most patience for her, tolerating her ineffective kicking, her screaming in the bathroom when she succeeded in prising the gag off despite hard leather and a padlock at the back of her head. Of course, it helped that he could hold her down with his mind, could dampen the air around her limbs until it felt as if she were fighting with lead weights tied to her wrists and ankles.

"I think we should drug her food," Castiel suggested drily, eyeing the plain oatmeal mash that he was preparing. Blue eyes slowly moved from the pan to the cupboard where they kept the first aid kit, contemplating stolen morphine with a dangerous gleam. He was getting sick of hearing the thumps and muffled screams that came like clockwork every time any of them got near Ruby's room.

Dean had been debating between downing half a bottle of Jack and passing out on the sofa so he didn't have to listen, or going in and choking the life out of the girl. He shook his head, hating the pounding behind his eyes. "I'm starting to think this was a bad idea," he admits. It had only been a couple of days, yes, and she hadn't yet had the time to settle down... but Jesus Christ did she have a set of lungs on her.

"Morphine," Cas suggests, just a little hopefully.

"Yes please," Dean replies, rubbing his eyes.

"No morphine," Sam interrupts, walking straight past both of them and to the huge old fridge they'd salvaged from a garage sale. He pulled out a beer and twisted the cap off in his hand. "I need you lucid, Dean."

"For the girl," Castiel explains, even if he was sure that wasn't what Dean had meant with the 'yes, please'.

For a moment it looks as if Sam is struggling with the idea. He gives in with a sigh, leaning against the side of the fridge. "Fine," he agrees, "start dosing her with her food. But... just until she's calmed down. It's not a good idea to have a morphine addict on our hands."

They relish a scream-free night, and ruin it all in the early hours of the morning by dumping her into a bathtub full of what looks like blood and viscera. It's actually not, because filling a bathtub full of blood and guts would be a bit excessive, but she doesn't know that.

Ruby is doped up just enough to not really understand the difference between the reality of a tub full of skinned tomatoes and red wine and the idea of a tub full of blood and gore. She screams so loudly that the next morning Dean is making joking excuses to the neighbours about that horror movie marathon and Castiel hands Sam a mop and a bucket, telling him without any words whatsoever that he is not responsible for scraping tomato-crud from the bathroom walls.

* * *

Objects appear and disappear from the room as time goes on. A mallet lies innocently against the wall for a few days before disappearing again, a saw makes a brief appearance, a box labeled 'TNT' (that absolutely does not contain dynamite). A shotgun gets perched above the TV for a weekend of cowboy shoot-'em-up cartoons.

* * *

"Is there some kind of point to this?" Dean hisses as they carefully screw the bracket for the gun into the wall above the TV, quieter than mice while Ruby sleeps in her chair in a drugged-out stupor.

"The idea is to get her used to having weapons around," Sam explains, "to let her mind connect the images on screen to things in real life. Having her watch cartoons all day doesn't do anything unless she starts blurring the line between reality and what she watches."

"Christ, Sammy. Do you just absorb the textbooks through some kind of osmosis? Where do you get this crap?"

"Mostly?" They hang the shotgun on the wall and tiptoe out again. "From you. I just make it sound better."

* * *

They start instigating rewards for proper behaviour. Every time Ruby gets caught up in one of the cartoons and laughs at the explosions, she gets rewarded. If she gets a cow's heart tossed into her lap and doesn't scream, she gets candy.

* * *

"Candy." Castiel repeats, giving both Winchesters a look they've come to recognise as code for '_are you a complete dumbass_?' He looks down at the shopping list he's just been handed, a long line of childish sweets that all come in brightly coloured wrappings. "Candy," he says again. And sighs. "And meat parts."

"So we're going for something a bit childish this time," Sam says, the puppydog look on his face. It makes him look simultaneously younger and much more trustworthy, like a virginal college boy who still sings in his local Christian choir.

"Meat. Parts."

"C'mon, Cas," Dean wheedles, rocking a bad-boy grin and a much different kind of 'innocence'. "It's not like you have to clean it up..."

* * *

Childish and bizarre. That's how it goes. If organs from the butcher's shop get thrown into her lap during the climax of a show and she laughs, the rewards only escalate.

* * *

"Did you see this?" Dean asks, dropping a slightly crumpled flier into Sam's lap. "It was hanging up at the post office. I thought you'd get a kick out of it."

"Ruby Fields, missing," Sam reads aloud, paraphrasing a little, "disappeared three months ago. If you have any information, please contact her parents Martha and Grady." The flier is photocopied, but the original is obviously hand-written. There's a black and white photo of Ruby's face right in the centre.

"There you go," Dean says, dropping down onto the couch beside his brother. "Now it's almost like you've met your in-laws."

"Martha and Grady." Sam raises his eyebrows, then crumples the piece of paper. "Nice to meet you."

* * *

When they pull the same trick as before and dump her into a vat of unidentified red goo, she whoops with glee and throws some of it with unerring aim right into Sam's face, then sits in the tub giggling as he gapes in surprise. It's about then that they decide she can stand to be untied and maybe given a little more freedom around the house.

* * *

Ruby moves around the room cautiously at first, touching the squishy, blanketted walls. She picks up the sledgehammer sitting by the TV, holds it in her hands a moment, then sets it down again. She pauses in front of the blacked-out window, and finally turns to the door. It's open a crack, and she tiptoes over in her bare feet to peer through the gap.

Nothing but the hallway greets her and Ruby carefully pushes open the door and steps into the hall. A bright blue arrow has been hastily spray painted onto the wooden floor. Curious, she follows it down to an open space that she guesses must be the living room. Everything there is ratty and old, obviously bought from second hand stores. The few exceptions stick out like neon lights.

Ruby zeroes in on the cake from across the room, her mouth instantly watering at the sight and smell of what is obviously freshly baked and heavily iced chocolate cake. She's half way across the room to the table before she notices that she's not actually the only person there and that behind the cake, on the opposite side of the table, are the three men who've been the basis of her routine for an indeterminable amount of time.

"We thought you'd like something different," the youngest, and tallest, says, getting up out of his chair. "For a change. My name's Sam, this is my brother Dean, and our... friend. Castiel."

"I'm Ruby," she replies, crossing her arms over her chest. She remembers that the last time she saw this guy he was still blinking in surprise from the squishy red stuff she'd thrown at him and relaxes just a little. "But I think you already know that."

"We do," Sam confirms, nodding. "Do you like chocolate cake, Ruby?"

"Yeah..."

"Then sit down, chickadee," Dean says, kicking a chair out and offering her a charming smile. "We're celebrating."

Ruby takes the seat carefully, all too aware that she's dressed in nothing but tiny little pajama shorts and a tank top and that these men are fully dressed. A huge piece of chocolate cake is put on a plate in front of her and she loosens up a little from where she'd started to tense. Cake is good. Cake is something she can get behind.

"What are you celebrating?" she asks, swiping off a little of the icing with a finger and licking it. The icing is rich, more like fudge than anything else. Whoever these freaks really are, they have good taste in cake.

"You," Sam replies, and smiles at her.

"Me?"

"Yeah, you. Your new-found freedom. See, Ruby, we're letting you out of the room."

"No more cartoons?" Ruby asks, actually a bit dismayed to think that she wont get to find out what happened to the red rabbit.

"No," Sam is quick to assure her, "you can still watch the cartoons if you want. But now you can sleep in a real bed and get up whenever you feel like it."

"Pampered." The single word comes from the blue eyed man, who looks neither happy nor interested. Only when she catches his eye he doesn't looked bored at all. "Eat your cake."

"Eat yours," Ruby replies. She picks up the cake, takes a huge bite, then pokes her tongue out at him.


	2. Chapter 2

Ruby takes to the Winchesters as if she was someone completely new meeting them for the first time. She teases and flirts with Dean, referencing pop culture a mile a minute until she either has him laughing or ready to sock her in the mouth. She flirts with Sam in different ways, quiet flirting that winds up to smouldering glances. She references Star Wars while talking about philosophy and Sam can't help but laugh. She's not his ideal woman, not his perfect match. But she's fun, he thinks, and that's really all he needs.

* * *

One morning when Ruby wakes up and wanders into the kitchen to pour herself a bowl of cereal she notices that there are two large duffle bags lying by the front door. The door itself is open, and she can see Dean and Castiel leaning against the side of a black classic, chatting quietly with the boot open.

She's still contemplating the sight when Sam sneaks up behind her. "We're leaving today," he says, startling her.

"Leaving?" Ruby asks. "where are you going?"

"We. We're leaving," he repeats, and she gets it.

"Sam, really, it's been fun. But I've got a life to get back to and everything, so if you're leaving maybe you should just... leave."

"So you can go back to your day job and your parents and your normal life?"

"Yeah," Ruby nods.

"Back to your normal, boring life?" Sam asks again. "Back to a life with rules."

"You have rules," Ruby protests, but the idea of boring suddenly seems a whole lot more confining now that he's said it like that.

"If you come with us, Ruby," Sam says, and his voice is oddly seductive as his eyes flash that strange yellow in the light, "You'll get to do pretty much whatever you want. You'll never be bored. There will be no rules except 'dont get caught'. You'll be in a world," he presses, lifting her just an inch from the ground with his mind and watching her gasp and wriggle in the air, "full of things you've never dreamed of..."

"You...!" She gasps, staring at him.

"I can do more than that," Sam says, smiling at her as he places her back down again.

"Not boring?" Ruby asks eventually. "No consequences?"

"None. If you don't get caught."

"I want to call my parents."

"You can call them when we get to the next city," Sam promises, with very little intention to let her do so, at least not without heavy supervision.

Ruby crosses her arms for a moment of indecision, then ignores her mostly undressed state to hop down the front stairs and into the car, sliding into the back. Sam hauls the last two bags into the boot, then slides into the back with her.

* * *

Distractions were so easy to conjure. A bit of sparkle, a bit of flash, and Ruby had completely forgotten that she'd intended to call her parents. The distraction came in the form of a fancy house and a pair of fancy home owners who, with a little prompting, suddenly found themselves prisoners in their own home, tied up in the basement and dosed with the wife's prescription painkillers.

"I could stay here." Dean grins, popping the lock on the alcohol cabinet and helping himself to a bottle of scotch. "Yeah, I'm really liking this place."

"How long can we stay for?" Ruby asks, running her hands over the furniture and stopping to poke at a family portrait.

"A week," Sam answers, coming up behind her. "Maybe a little more." He places large hands on her shoulders and smooths down her arms. "No more than two weeks, in case someone notices the owners are missing." He leans down to place a kiss to her bare shoulder and smiles. "You can pick your own room. I hope you'll pick one close to mine..."

Ruby turns to watch as the younger Winchester walks away. She grins to herself, then twirls on the spot just because she can. The freedom in it is exhilarating; She doesn't give a second thought to the couple locked in their own cellar.

When she stops spinning she sees Castiel looking at her from across the room, face masked with blankness. She hasn't learned how to read his eyes yet to look for what he's feeling, though she knows he does feel and that the brothers must be able to decipher it. They never seem to have any problems knowing exactly what their 'guardian angel' is thinking.

Ruby looks for Dean, because so far she's never seen Castiel far from the elder Winchester, but he seems to have taken his bottle of scotch on a tour of the house and left his angel behind. "What?" Ruby demands, crossing her arms. "What do you want? What are you looking at?"

He shrugs, and she can see that it's a calculated movement, like he has to consciously think about the way his shoulders need to move. "You should be aware," he says finally, "that you're not his first priority."

Ruby is about to ask him what the hell he's on about when she catches on. "Who - Sam? That's stupid. Didn't you just see what he..." She catches on. "Oh. That's not what you mean."

"Dean will always come first."

Ruby looks down at her toes against the carpet, wriggling them against the plush, expensive material. She thinks she might know exactly what he means, that it's not about sex or that kind of sharing. "Hey," she says, looking up just in time to catch him leaving. "Wait!" She catches up to him, leaping over the back of a couch and over a coffee table to do so, almost tripping and falling on her face in the process. She's right in front of him, face to face and looking him right in the eyes when she asks; "But is it worth it?"

Ruby sees something flicker in the depths of his blue eyes. "Well?" she presses. "Is it worth it?"

"If you let go," Castiel tells her calmly.

She's still wondering what the hell he means when he's long gone and she's left standing in the room on her own.

* * *

"Let go of what?"

Ruby is disturbed to see him giving her a look that clearly asks if she's really that braindead.

"What? Let go of what?"

She follows him around all day pestering him with questions. She wants two things. The most pressing is initially an answer, but the longer her pestering goes on the more important it seems to get Castiel to crack and do something other than answer with a calm face and passive voice.

She cracks him at exactly four past three in the afternoon, and he cracks her in the jaw with a heavy fist.

"Shut up," he says, deceptively calm despite the blazing blue eyes.

Ruby raises a hand to touch the hurt on her jaw. She realises that it could have been - should have been - a lot worse. She grins. "Cas! You like me!"

He rolls his eyes skyward as if asking for patience. "This is not third grade."

"You could have broken my face and you didn't," Ruby says, flinging her arms around the mostly-impassive man and smacking a kiss against his cheek. "That means you like me."

Castiel pushes her off with a mixture of amusement and annoyance in his eyes (at least, that's what she thinks he's showing). "Next time I wont be so nice."

It takes her three days to figure out that he's totally bluffing when he says that. Ruby can't help but feel like somehow that's an accomplishment.

* * *

"Cas hates you."

The drawling voice in her ear belongs to Dean. Ruby turns away from the huge flat screen TV in surprise, cartoon mallets and explosions reflected in her eyes. It's long past midnight, her lips are still bruised and tingling from Sam's goodnight kiss, and there's a late night marathon on the cartoon channel. In the light from the TV, Dean's face is nothing but highlights and shadow, glints of colour in his eyes making him look unreal. As unreal as one of the characters in her cartoon.

"He doesn't hate me," Ruby scoffs, the idea totally ludicrous. She points to the barely-there bruise on her jaw, smiling triumphantly, "he didn't break my jaw. So there."

"Cas hates your guts," Dean chuckles. He balls a hand into a fist and knocks her gently on the jaw, the kind of oddly affectionate gesture a parent might offer to a child. "He wants to slit your throat and play with your blood. Ruby blood."

Ruby shakes her head, ducking away from Dean's hand and crossing her arms firmly over her chest. "That's not true."

The green-eyed brother leans his weight against his forearms on the back of the couch. He's giving her an odd kind of look, part-sympathy, part-condescension. "Yes it is, Ruby-girl."

"Is not."

"Cas wont do much more than clock you one. But if I were you," Dean grins at her, all boyish-sweetness and mischief, "I wouldn't keep teasing him." He pats her shoulder with a heavy hand. "Learn to read his face, chickadee. And quit fucking with my angel."

He leaves then, and Ruby is left sitting alone on the couch with nothing but her show and a pout. She slinks away during the next break, tiptoeing down the hallway until she finds the room Sam has claimed for himself.

The door is unlocked, the inside of the room dark. She stumbles on something hard and vaguely round before making it to the bed. Ruby bites her pouting bottom lip as she climbs over the plush coverlet. "Sam," she whispers, drawing out the middle of his name. "Saaaam..."

"What?" He asks in a groan, half asleep and grumpy.

"Dean says Cas doesn't like me," Ruby tells him, flopping down on the bed beside him.

"So?"

"Is it true?"

"Ruby, go to bed."

"I'm on a bed."

"Go to your bed, or shut up and let me sleep."

"But -"

"Go to bed, Ruby." The order is firm, threatening a proper reaction if she doesn't comply.

Ruby pouts and slides off the bed, knowing Sam isn't going to wake up enough to be anything but grumpy. Instead of complaining she sticks her tongue out at him before she leaves the room, then goes to the kitchen to find some snacks. Two cartoons and a red Popsicle later and she's out like a light on the couch, the tv still casting its glow over her.

* * *

In the morning she wakes up to a sweet, slightly floury smell in the air, goosebumps on her arms and legs from the crips morning chill. She looks down at herself and realises that she's still wearing nothing more than a tank top and shorts. Ruby resolves to go looking in the big fancy wardrobe in the master bedroom to see if there's anything pretty - and warmer - for her to wear. But for now the smell of a home cooked breakfast is way too enticing.

Ruby follows her nose to the massive stainless steel and porcelain kitchen.

Sam is there already, reading the morning edition of the paper and absently poking at a plate full of syrup-coated waffles. Dean is nearby with a stack of his own waffles and a jug of maple syrup next to his coffee. She doesn't even notice Castiel until she sits down and he places a white china bowl with two perfect waffles down in front of her.

Ruby tries to catch a glimpse of his expression, only finding it as closed and impossible as ever.

"They're having an antiques fair on the sixteenth," Sam says, obviously not talking to her and not even looking up from the paper. "I thought we could go."

"Pansy." Dean makes the reply with a smirk over the top of his coffee cup. "We're in a house surrounded with fancy ornaments and family heirlooms and you want to go to an antiques fair."

"Think of the fresh-faced debutantes, Dean," Sam folds the paper and sets it aside.

"Think of the stuck up assholes with their ceramics collections. Worcester and Spode." Dean rolls his eyes. "Kiss my ass."

Ruby has no idea what they're talking about and frankly doesn't care, busying herself by pouring a mountain of syrup over her waffles.

"There's a collection of nineteenth century revolvers," Sam counters, and its an argument that seems to make Dean reconsider, "and there are bound to be knives."

"I like knives," Castiel chimes in, an odd look in his eyes.

"Fine." Dean shakes his head, muttering into his coffee; "Fucking outnumbered."

Ruby pushes back her chair, finished with breakfast and bored with listening to the brothers' conversation. The chair legs scrape against the floor. "I'm bored," she announces expectantly.

Sam looks at her then, a small frown on his face. Ruby offers him her very best pout. He smiles at her. She feels a sudden weightlessness as she's lifted half a foot into the air and pushed the length of the kitchen, coming to a stop only inches from the wall. Ruby giggles as she's dropped back to her feet. She takes Sam's hand when it's offered to her.

"Lets find you something fun to do," he says, still smiling at her.

* * *

Something fun ends with Sam watching her play dress-ups with the rich woman's wardrobe. Ruby drapes herself in silk dresses that are just a tiny bit too big, adding ostentatious flare from the huge jewellery box on the vanity as well as expensive perfume and powder.

She twirls in a cocktail dress and feather boa, laughing because she hasn't had this much fun with clothes since she was a kid.

"You look good in diamonds," Sam tells her as he does up the clasp on a necklace while she holds her hair out of the way.

Ruby beams at him in the mirror. "They're so sparkly," she sighs happily. "I didn't think they sparkled so much in real life, I thought it was just on TV. Do you think I'm pretty?"

"I think you're very pretty."

"Can I keep the diamonds then?"

"What do you think, Ruby?" Sam asked her, a smile encouraging her to make up her own mind.

"I think I get to keep them," Ruby replies smartly. She turns to grin at him cheekily. The thought that the necklace belongs to someone else doesn't even cross her mind. all she knows is she wants them, and Sam just as good as said she can have them. That's all she needs to know.

In the end she finds a pair of plain black dress pants that fit her well enough that they don't look strange, and a cashmere sweater to go over the grey camisole she finds in a drawer. She leaves her old clothes crumpled on the floor, somehow feeling more grown up than she had the day she moved out into her first apartment.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes**: Apparently, nobody cares about this story. I reckon that's about the best thing I've ever realised, since it means I don't have to worry about offending anyone. :)

* * *

"You're spoiling her to death, dude."

Sam shakes his head, then looks at his brother rather than at the road. They're alone in the car, out on a supply run to restock the mansion's kitchen with perishables and basics. Dean is sitting in the passenger seat, leaning back and idly playing with the lighter he usually kept on him. The flame flicks on and off under Dean's fingers twice before Sam replies; "Dean, she's responding to everything perfectly. I don't see what the problem is."

"You spoil her too much and it'll bite you in the ass."

"I'm working on her," Sam says firmly, "she knows who's boss."

"Whatever you say, Sammy."

-

* * *

Two weeks are up way too fast. Ruby pouts in her new clothes as the Winchesters and Castiel get ready to leave. She sits on one of the fancy couches while they pack their bags again and stow them in the car.

It takes a little time for her to notice the smell. It comes on slow, needing time to seep in through the air. Ruby's nose wrinkles. She begins to feel sick as the smell grows heavier. A combination of stale vomit and human waste. It's absolutely disgusting, but perverse curiosity demands that she know where it's coming from.

Ruby stands and turns, immediately regretting it when she sees Sam appear from the door leading into the kitchen. The door catches on something, unable to close all the way, and it takes her a moment to realise that he's dragging someone, his fist closed in a knot around bottle-blonde hair. The woman is malnourished, thin, barely conscious, covered in grime and bodily fluids. She only has one shoe, the other lost somewhere between cellar and kitchen.

A male hand catches the kitchen door before it can swing closed, free of the obstruction caused by the woman's body. Dean appears, carrying two bottles of liquor in one hand, lighter in the other. Cas follows behind, dragging a grey-faced unconscious man by one of the man's arms. It doesn't look right, the angle is wrong, and Ruby belatedly realises that it must be dislocated at the shoulder.

Alarm rises as the three men work in perfect measured steps, propping the bodies together on the very couch that Ruby had just vacated. Dean splashes them with liquor, emptying one bottle over each of them. He grins and flicks the lighter open.

Sam pulls her away before the flame touches the woman's horrifically dirty skirt.

It hits her as she's hustled into the back of the black beauty. She can smell it, she could hear it, almost taste it. Cold hard reality creeps in on her, making her feel surreal in the backseat while the Winchesters tell jokes about barbecue and wonder if the fire department will get there before the whole house is ash.

The mansion is practically the only house on the block, the only other residence half a mile away across a newly sealed road and a massive expanse of garden.

This is the first time she'd considered what had happened to the original occupants of the big mansion, and it made Ruby feel very uncomfortable.

-

* * *

"Mom?"

They're at a rest stop somewhere. There's a gas station, a cafe/diner, a fruit shop, and a tiny little general store all sharing the same car park. There's also a pay phone, and Ruby stole a few quarters from the tip jar at the diner to use it.

"Ruby?" Her mother sounds shocked and relieved, like she didn't think Ruby was really calling. "Honey, oh my God. Ruby, where are you?"

Ruby looks around, both for identifying features and for the Winchesters or Castiel. "I don't know," Ruby says, unable to find any helpful signs, "I'm at a rest stop somewhere. I can't see any signs or anything."

"Are you ok?"

"I... don't know." Ruby bites her lip. She really doesn't know. She'd thought that she was having fun, but then...

"Are you hurt?"

"No. I'm just... I'm fine, mom."

"Are you sure you're OK, Ruby?" Her mother's voice sounds anxious, concerned and confused. It makes Ruby bite her lip harder. "We thought you'd been kidnapped. There was no note but none of your clothes or things were missing and Annie said the house looked like a hurricane had run right through the hall."

"I was, I think. The Winchesters -"

A hand slams down on the switch-hook and the line suddenly goes dead, her connection with her mother cut off by the dial tone. Ruby follows the arm up to a furious glare and yellow eyes. She drops the handset, letting it swing by its cord from the phonebox.

"Just what in the name of fuck did you think you were doing?" Sam's voice is low and dangerous, a tone she's never heard before that makes her take an automatic step back.

"Told you it would bite you in the ass, Sam."

"Shut up, Dean."

Ruby's eyes flick to where Dean stands, flanking her on her right. She has an odd feeling that if she were to turn around she'd only come face to face with Castiel. "You said I could -" She starts, about to remind Sam about his promise to let her call her parents, but she's interrupted by the same angry snarl;

"Shut up. Just shut up." A hand reaches out and clamps like a vice around her arm. Sam starts walking, pulling her towards the car in a manner that implies that if she doesn't keep up she's going to be getting dragged. The car door flies open before they get there and Ruby finds herself getting shoved inside. The door slams shut behind her, the child lock settling into place with an absurdly loud click.

She's left alone for what seems like a long time, presumably to let Sam calm down. When they finally return Sam slides into the driver's seat in complete silence, a stony glare focused out the windshield. Dean sits beside him in the front, and a calm-faced Castiel joins her in the back, an as yet closed straight razor held in one hand. He sees her looking and looks right back.

Ruby feels strangely small.

-

* * *

The car gets cramped, the silence stretching on way too long. Eventually someone turns the radio on, filling the car with country rock for a couple of hours before the frequency is lost. Somehow Ruby must have fallen asleep because when she wakes up it's dark and Dean is behind the wheel. She can't see Sam and assumes he must be curled up somehow on the front seat, maybe with his head pillowed on his brother's lap.

Castiel's eyes glint in the darkness beside her.

Ruby curls further into the corner against the door, wishing she had someone warm and welcoming to lean against.

The next time she wakes up is just before dawn, the twilight before the sun rises enough to let her see the rough little cabin before she even notices that the car has stopped. Ruby sits up, pain flaring in her neck and back from sleeping in such an awkward position against the door. She's alone in the car, and through the window she can see a figure moving towards her.

The door opens and Dean reaches in to pull her out, keeping a hand on her upper arm as if she might run away into the surrounding evergreens. The air smells like pine and feels much less dry. When she looks back over her shoulder she can see that the road is more like a driveway made of hard-packed dirt in two distinct furrows.

"Welcome to the cabin, chickadee," Dean says as he escorts her to the tiny wooden structure. "You better get used to it. We're going to be here a while thanks to you."

The cabin is only three small rooms and a bathroom that seemed to have been tacked on as an afterthought. The kitchen and living room are one and the same, and one of the two minuscule bedrooms was missing a door. The furniture was rustic and rough, the appliances all at least ten years out of date. The only consolation were the huge, fluffy blankets that she could see.

Dean pushed her in the direction of the bedroom with the door. "Since you're a girl, you get the one with the door."

"Where's Sam?" Ruby asks, hesitating at the door to her room.

Dean smirks, crossing his arms. "Chopping wood. He'll read you the riot act when he's done. You're not my problem, so I just get to tell you that if you try and run away we'll hunt you down and shoot you."

She doesn't think he's lying. Ruby retreats into her room, shutting the door on the space barely big enough to house the futon bed that it sports. There's only that, a rickety bedside table and a battered old lamp. Her tank top and pajama pants are already laid out on the bed, freshly laundered since the last time she saw them.

Ruby sits down on the bed and waits. She hears the door open and male voices speaking in an indistinct murmur but it's a long time before Sam opens her door.

He looks huge in the frame of the door, like a bear.

"I'm sorry," Ruby says quickly.

Sam steps into the room and shuts the door behind him. "Ruby, do you remember when I told you how there were no rules?" Sam begins, his voice measured and timed, as if he'd rehearsed this speech. "Except getting caught. I told you, there are no rules except don't get caught. What you did, calling your parents, that's well on the way to getting caught. See, baby, I'm sure you've guessed by now that we're not nice men. Lots of people want to see us in prison, and when you called your mother and told her you were with us the police can trace the call and find out where we were last."

He pauses, looking at her as if waiting for a reply. Ruby just bites her lip and looks away, staring at the lamp to avoid looking at Sam's face.

"So that's why we're here," Sam finishes. "And while we're here you don't get to leave the cabin. Understand, Ruby? You don't get to go further than the tree line before Dean, or Cas, or myself comes to drag you back."

-

* * *

It's boring. Incredibly claustrophobic and boring. Nobody else seems to have the same problem, all three men seemingly quite comfortable in their rustic surroundings. Castiel has taken over the kitchen, which has a wood stove and no microwave, and the Winchester brothers seem to divide their time between hunting small game in the surrounding forest, plotting over maps and newspapers in the other bedroom, and disappearing in the car for long stretches of time, sometimes with Castiel. One of the three always stays behind. To watch her.

-

* * *

The black beauty rattles along the driveway, the sound coming only from the boot - her suspension is in perfect tune, Dean makes sure of that. There's noise on the radio, mostly static, but when Sam reaches to turn it up the voices become clearer.

"... missing young woman, the FBI is now on national alert. If you have any information in regards to the Winchester brothers or their accomplice James Novak you are advised to call this hotline -"

Dean twists the dial, turning the radio off. "Celebrity status is a pain in the ass," he says.

"It'll blow over," Sam says, but sighs a little and slumps down in the passenger seat.

"Don't let it get you down, Sammy." Dean looks away from the road long enough to crack a smile at his younger brother. "Dad was officially wanted under three different names before he kicked the bucket. Anyway, it's not like they've built a prison that can hold us for longer than we want it to."

"I just didn't think she'd actually -"

"So you screwed up. So what? She learns or we slice her head off and start again."

"We have to keep pushing her while we're here. I don't want an adorable little liability tagging along in the back seat, I want - shit, Dean!"

"That's a new one."

"You almost hit a fucking deer!"

"I did not." Dean strokes the dashboard as if in apology, or maybe reassurance. "I'd never hurt my baby like that."

The conversation trails off into silence as the black beauty turns back onto a proper bitumen-covered road. Sam doesn't try to pick it up again, or to finish what he'd been about to say. Dean knows, after all, understands exactly what he means. Sam thinks about the deer, thinks about their father and the things they'd inherited from him.

"Hey," he says suddenly, "you want to go hunting later?"

-

* * *

Ruby always felt the least comfortable when it was a pair of blue eyes subtly tracking her movements and not green, or a warmer brown.

-

* * *

The only noise is the slight squeak of springs in the mattress, and the sound of muffled panting. The open door leads to a graphic scene of exposed flesh and tangled limbs. Castiel's head is thrown back, his face twisted into an actual expression; involuntary and foreign, it looks like bliss and pain all at once. Dean's mouth is pressed against Castiel's throat, tongue laving and teeth flashing.

Ruby turns away, a flush rising on her face, only to see Sam sitting casually on the couch with a well-thumbed book as if nothing at all is out of the ordinary. Ruby thinks about retreating back to the safe confines of her room but then Sam looks up and gives her a little smile.

"Animals," he says, and rolls his eyes.

"Fuck you, Sammy." The reply sails out from the open bedroom, rough and strained and still somehow holding a hint of laughter.

She starts to see it then, starting with the look she catches in Castiel's eyes as he rolls out of bed and reaches for a pair of jeans. He looks smug, and contemptuous. Ruby can tell now, she can see that when he looks at her he's thinking she's spoiled and stupid, she can see the strange fervour when he touches any knives, and the softness that he keeps solely reserved for Dean.

She'd actually used to think that they held staring competitions over the table or across the room, that it was just a waiting game to see who would speak first. Now she could tell that they held entire conversations without ever saying a word.

They hadn't been in such close quarters before. In the first house she hadn't spent much time outside her own little world, too self-absorbed to really notice what else was going on. The mansion had been huge, if she'd really tried Ruby could have gone days without seeing anyone else. The cabin was tiny. A world of its own, and they lived in each others pockets because of it.

Sam and Dean bickered constantly, seemingly as a source of amusement. One moment they'd have their heads together over a map, the next they'd be calling each other names and making physical threats that never ended in anything other than a quick scuffle and matching grins.

Ruby had to get up increasingly early to catch the bathroom while there was still hot water. One morning she'd staggered into the bathroom half-asleep at four in the morning only to see Dean and Castiel in the shower together. After that she decided that evening showers were better.

It took her at least a week to realise that she was jealous.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes**: Apparently there's character developent hidden somewhere in here.

* * *

"Envy." Castiel murmurs the word right into Dean's ear. A quick glance at the wall. Dean knew what he was talking about.

"Gluttony. Sloth. Greed." Dean ticks the cardinal sins off one by one, pressing a fingertip into the pillow for each. "Regular little sinner, isn't she?"

"Lust," Castiel replies, something oddly enticing in his voice.

"Just pride and wrath left," Sam's voice rumbles sleepily from Dean's other side, close enough on the relatively small bed that the brothers are sharing a blanket of body heat. "Don't you dare screw him while I'm in the bed, Dean. Some of us need sleep."

Dean rolls his eyes. "You wouldn't be so pissy if you weren't waiting for your brat to make the first move."

"Screw you."

"Prissy little bitch. Ow!"

-

* * *

Ruby is the accidental witness of a blowjob by the wood shed when she makes the mistake of looking out the window. She's so frustrated that she nearly screams. It's ten in the freakin' morning, why couldn't they keep out of sight like normal people instead of performing sexual acts in the middle of the back yard?

Ruby turns away from the window, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring at the wall. To be fair, she supposes they weren't to know that she was going to look out the window at that exact time. It's still enough to make her want to pull her hair out.

She paces back and forth across the length of the tiny living room.

It wasn't fair! It's so not fair that it hurts. She can't stop thinking about it now, about the last time she was intimate with anyone, the last time anyone touched her like that. The unsettling answer uncurls in the pit of her stomach as she recalls fumbling hands and men who were only interested in themselves. Nobody had ever shown her that kind of physical adoration.

A vibrator would have given her more intimacy than she'd received in all of her previous sexual encounters.

The thought is depressing, and maddening.

Ruby is in the open bedroom before she can stop to think about her actions, one leg on either side of Sam's waist as he looks up at her with a slightly confused expression. She kisses away the confusion. His hands slide up her thighs, huge and unbearably hot against her skin. He sits up and she slides down into his lap, her hands sliding around his neck, holding on for dear life as he suddenly stands, holding her up with his hands under her upper thighs.

Ruby doesn't have to wonder where they're going. She can almost feel it when Sam opens the door to her bedroom with nothing more than a thought. Then the door is slamming shut behind them and Ruby is dumped on the bed.

Clothes disappear fast, at one point she swears she can hear something rip. Neither of them says a word, the only sounds in the air come from Ruby; Choked little noises like moans that he drags from her with fingers and teeth.

Afterwards she wonders why they didn't do that sooner.

-

* * *

"We've got a lead."

Castiel tilts his head slightly to the side, raising a hand slowly to pull on the small plastic stick in his mouth. The candy on the end comes free with a small pop, and Dean is momentarily distracted by the red-stained lips and tongue. "You're leaving," Castiel says.

Dean reaches out and swipes the other man's lips with his thumb, then licks residual cherry-flavour from his skin. "Just for a couple of days," he says finally. He looks up, leaning heavily against the pine tree behind him and ignoring the knots and twists in the bark that push against his jacket. "There's a little town a few hour's drive with this collector..."

"You want me to look after the brat."

Dean looks back at his companion, sees the utter disgust hidden in his blue eyes. "Come on, Cas. She's not that bad."

"She's spoiled."

"So you can push her around a bit," Dean pushes away from the pine tree and saunters over to the other man. He slides an arm around Castiel's waist and yanks the lollipop out of his hand. "Just don't kill her or make her bleed or we'll have Sam at our throats before you can say 'demonic hissy-fit'."

Dean licks the lollipop, wetting the red round of candy until it shines. He presses the candy against Castiel's lips, painting them red in sugar. "Don't sweat it, angelface," he says, pushing the lollipop against Castiel's lips until they part and a tongue flicks delicately at the cherry-flavoured treat. "We'll be back before you know it."

"Can I lock her in the shed?" Castiel asks.

"Sure. Why not?"

"Do I have to feed her?"

Dean chuckles, watching Castiel's tongue flick out and sweep over the lollipop again. "You've got an incurable cruel streak... And perfect fuck-me lips," he murmurs, leaning in to lick the red away.

-

* * *

Ruby wakes up alone for the first time in a week, curled into a ball around one of Sam's shirts. Most of his things are still there, where they'd been dragged into her room. A few things are not. A change or two of clothes, all the more obvious for Sam's very small wardrobe, his wallet, phone, and the hunting knife that he told her never to touch.

The cabin seems unusually quiet. Light spills through the few cracks in the walls between boards, a phenomenon singular to morning. Normally there would be some noise, some sound from the other rooms or from outside. All Ruby can hear is her own breathing, and the sounds of distant bird calls.

Ruby dresses in the silence, shrugging into Sam's shirt over the top of her tank. She opens the bedroom door to an empty cabin that smells faintly of cinnamon and sugar, something warm and welcoming that makes the emptiness seem even more bizarre. The smell is coming from a pot sitting on top of the stove - oatmeal spiced and seasoned into a concoction that makes her mouth water. She helps herself without a second thought, using one of the mismatched china bowls in the cupboards and a wooden spoon that looks as if it might have been hand made.

As she eats she wanders around the inside of the cabin, poking her head into the other bedroom (bed neatly made, things put away, only Dean's favourite revolver seems to be missing), the bathroom, and finally taking the time to peer outside. The car is gone.

For a moment Ruby thinks she might actually have been left alone.

The illusion lasts for a full minute. Then she notices a figure walking up the driveway, carrying two dead rabbits in one hand and a machete in the other. Ruby recognises the way the man walks before he even gets close enough for her to see his face. She gives a melodramatic sigh and disappears back into the cabin to dump her bowl and spoon into the sink.

She's been left with Castiel.

Ruby slumps down on the couch just as Castiel shoulders the door open. He walks past her and into the kitchen, something about his posture giving her the impression of disapproval when he looks at the minor mess she's made.

"I didn't do it," Ruby tells him snottily, crossing her arms.

He doesn't call her out on the lie, simply takes out a cutting board and lays the rabbits out on the wooden block. "They're gone," he says, digging out a very sharp knife to start cutting away skin and fur. "Two, maybe three days."

"Where did they go?" Ruby asks, uncrossing her arms and turning on the couch to face him. She wants information, can't help but feel both curious and left out at the same time.

"Away." A few simple cuts and skin peels away from flesh almost entirely in one go. Another long slice, a chop to get the head off, and the first set of entrails is swept off the cutting board and into a plastic bag.

"Did they tell you where they were going?"

"Yes."

Ruby pouts. "Why didn't they tell me?"

"Because you're a brat," Castiel replies simply, peeling off the fur from the second rabbit.

"That's not fair!"

"Life isn't fair."

"Your face isn't fair," Ruby mutters, aware that she was taking the low road as far as insults went. She pokes out her tongue and ignores the way he quarters the first rabbit like he wishes it was her face.

"It would be best," Castiel says, voice perfectly measured while the blade in his hand flashes, slicing meat from bone; "If you stayed out of my way until Sam and Dean return."

"Why?" Ruby demands. "You're not the boss of me."

The blade slams down, cleaving deep into the cutting board. Blue eyes flash dangerously in an otherwise impassive face and Ruby begins to rethink the impulse to be difficult. A few moments pass in complete silence before Castiel begins slicing again. "That was one," he says. "Get to three and you sleep in the wood shed."

Ruby gets to number two at quarter to twelve when she plaintively demands that Castiel cure her boredom. For her pains, and her muttered 'Sam would be nice to me', she gets a book thrown at her head and the word 'two' hissed from across the room. The book is a supernatural thriller. She reads the entire thing in three hours and is soon back to feeling bored.

She avoids Castiel as much as possible until her stomach demands that she pay attention to it. It's just after dinner that she gets to number three. Ruby throws the mug without thinking, only knowing that she's sick of not getting her way and having to play by Castiel's stupid rules. The cup misses his head by just a few inches, smashing against the wall and sending ceramic pieces all over the kitchen.

Ruby freezes when he turns, caught like a deer in the headlights at the look of murder in his eyes. Then she scrambles away, vaulting over the couch to try and get to her bedroom before he gets to her.

She knows she's failed when a grip like a vice closes over her arm and yanks her back. Arms wrap around her torso from behind, lifting her off the ground enough for Castiel to start carrying her outside. Ruby kicks out, screaming and shouting just to be difficult. She's certain he wont kill her, but there are plenty of things he could do that were almost as unpleasant.

Somehow, with a lot of struggling, he manages to get the wood shed open without letting her get away. Then Ruby is thrown inside. The door slams shut behind her. She can hear it as he wraps a length of chain around the handle to lock the door, a padlock added as an extra precaution. The one tiny window is too high and too small to think about escaping through.

Ruby picks herself up from where she's fallen.

It's dark, and cold, and she can hear tiny things skittering around in the corners. She counts to two hundred before the window is jimmied open from the outside and an old blanket sails in, followed by a small battery-operated lamp and an almost-empty bottle of bug spray.

"Enjoy your night," Castiel says, then shuts the window on her again.

"I hate you!" Ruby shouts, tears forming in her eyes as she realises that this is not an idle threat. She'll have to stay the entire night in the wood shed.

She falls into an exhausted sleep sometime near dawn after a night of fretting and crying and willing the bugs and mice away. Cold and damp, she lies wrapped in the old blanket like a cocoon and sleeps like the dead.

When Ruby wakes up it takes her a moment to realise what's different. She's still cocooned in the scratchy old blanket, but now she's lying on a surface much softer than the pile of wood in the shed. She sits up and notices that she's back in her room. The door is open, and Castiel is watching her from the couch, a silent and wary sentinel.

She made it until three in the afternoon before she succeeded in getting him pissed off again. Like before she found herself carried out to the wood shed and thrown inside, left there to stew until long after she was done pouting and crying.

It's long after dark when Castiel finally opens up the door to let her out. He leads her back to the house, ignoring her sniffles, and sits her down to dinner.

Ruby's back in the shed within the hour.

-

* * *

The black beauty rumbles to a stop outside the cabin early in the morning with Dean behind the wheel. The mood is pretty light, considering that the lead had turned out to be nothing more than a false trail and a man spreading gossip to make his business look more interesting to his fellow collectors. Considering how they had left him, the man's collection would be passing on to others soon enough.

At least if it's hard for them to find, they decide, it's definitely hard for anyone else to find too.

Sam enters the cabin and immediately knows that something is wrong. He looks around, finding everything in place and spotlessly clean. The tv is off, and their guardian angel is standing in the bedroom door as if he'd been waiting there since he heard the engine. Sam looks around again, his eyes narrowing suspiciously as he searches for evidence of bloodshed, a patch of wood scrubbed too clean or fabric laundered too bright. He sees nothing, and it doesn't make him any less suspicious.

"Where's Ruby?"

Castiel shrugs, the action deliberate. It's a casual admission of guilt, not an 'I don't know'. "Wood shed," he says.

"She better not be..." Sam lets the sentence taper off into an unspoken threat, one hand clenching into a fist as he begins to contemplate what would make for an appropriate punishment if Castiel had succeeded in killing Ruby.

"She's alive. She just... annoyed me." Something much like a pout creeps into the blue-eyed man's voice, though his face doesn't so much as twitch. "She wouldn't stop talking."

"So you put her in the wood shed?" Sam asks, somewhere between amusement and annoyance. Amusement wins out when Dean ads his two cents;

"The woodshed, Cas? She pissed you off, so you gave her a time out? You're so fucking middle-aged sometimes. Next thing you know she's going to start calling you 'dad'."

The look of absolute disgust was enough to send both brothers into fits of laughter.

-

* * *

Ruby hears the engine only as it dies, wood clattering around her as she jerks awake. She's cold and feels stiff all over, muscles cramped from lying curled up on a pile of wood all night. It takes her a moment to wake up enough to realise that the Winchesters must be back, which means that Sam is back, which means...

"I want out of the shed!" Ruby wails, then curls up again to hide her face against her knees.

It feels like an awfully long time before she hears boots shuffling through the grass. The footsteps stop outside, replaced by the rattling sound of a chain. The door swings open and Ruby looks up, miserable and sore, to see Sam blocking the entire doorway. She launches herself at him, tripping over her own feet and caught by his arms before she can hit the ground. Ruby latches onto his shirt, pulling herself close and burying her face against his shirt. "I'm cold," she sobbed, "and I'm sore, and I was in here all night and I didn't even do anything wrong!"

A huge, warm hand rubs her back soothingly. "Shh," Sam coos, "my poor little Ruby. I'm sorry, baby. I thought Cas would play nice."

Ruby slides her arms around his neck and lets him carry her back to the cabin. She feels she deserves some coddling, deserves for Sam to make it all better again. Somewhere, distantly, she remembers that she's an adult. A woman. She doesn't need anyone to make things alright because she's independent and strong. She's a strong, independent young woman who wants nothing more than a hot shower and a bed and for Sam to make it all better. She also wants candy. And maybe a teddybear. Or a big mallet that she can use to hit Castiel in the face.

"Where did you go?" Ruby asks, her voice muffled by Sam's neck. He smells vaguely of sulphur, but for some reason it's not as unpleasant as it should be.

"Nowhere important," Sam replies.

"Is Castiel going to get in trouble?" The question is more like a demand. Ruby wants him in trouble.

"Dean's taking care of him," Sam assures her. As he carries her to the bathroom she catches a glimpse of Castiel and Dean in the open bedroom, the 'angel' stripped naked and spread out on the bed, trembling under the strap of Dean's belt.

By the time she figures out that it's not any kind of punnishment the brothers are already talking about leaving the cabin. Sam picks the destination with a careful eye, muttering something about hunters and distractions.


	5. Chapter 5

Notes: The next chapter is the last one for this particular arc. There is a half-written "third arc", which is really more like a prequel, plus a laundromat scene.

Please forgive my latin.

* * *

"Look at this."

Dean spreads the newspaper flat against the car bonnet and taps a finger squarely on the article he wants Sam to read. Sam frowns as he scans the text, then the picture. "Offering a thousand dollar reward for anyone who can give information on their daughter's whereabouts," he repeats the words almost exactly as they appear, impressed by the effort it must have taken to become news on a national scale.

"Sounds like a pretty expensive thing they've got going," Dean says, leaning casually against the side of his car.

"They must be desperate," Sam agrees. His frown deepens as he looks at the small black and white photo of the couple. The man tall and thin, the woman short and plump. They're like a study in physical opposites, different in every way except their expressions. He looks up when Dean's phone slides innocently across the top of the newspaper, pushed by his brother's fingers. "You're kidding," Sam says.

"Dude, how perfect would it be if it worked?"

"She's not ready."

"She's fucking annoying. She's taken every single bait she's been given. I don't give a rats if she's not ready, do you?"

Sam pushes the phone back. He rips the article from the paper and shoves it into his pocket. "I'll take a look at the map," he says. "And if this doesn't work you're going to owe me big."

"If it doesn't work I'll get down with the black magic houdou to get you a demon girlfriend."

Sam rolls his eyes. "Voodoo that you do," he mutters under his breath, earning a grin and 'Black Magic Woman' on repeat for the entire drive back to the cabin.

-

* * *

A new system to manage Ruby and her temperament is instigated in the last two weeks that they stay in the cabin. It was reviewed in the dark hours of the morning, using what the brothers remembered of their father's less military discipline methods and Castiel's memories of raising a well behaved little girl. He gives the advice as if reciting from a textbook, like the life he talks about wasn't actually his.

This time there are no jokes about time-outs.

Sam springs it all on Ruby as soon as she wakes up, taking her aside to tell her that she has to start earning her keep. It's just little things, the sorts of things a teenager would be expected to do around the house, and Sam impresses the importance of it with rough kisses and soft words.

She starts off well enough, only pouting a little when she's told to do the cleaning up after breakfast. Ruby manages for two days under Sam's gentle encouragement - which is much easier to listen to than Castiel's blunt disapproval - before disgust overtakes her when she's told to take out the garbage.

The look on her face when Sam carries her to the woodshed is one of shock. It's a wakeup call, he tells her through the cracks in the door. If she wants the good she has to wise up and stop acting like she expects to get everything handed to her free of charge.

Ruby sits in the shed for hours.

"I'm not six years old," she says to Sam when the door is opened again. "I'm grown up. I'm not a child."

"You need to stop acting like one," Sam tells her, taking her hand and pulling her to her feet.

"I don't think I can," Ruby admits quietly, looking at his hand and how it covers her own. It makes her look tiny by comparison, reinforces the feelings that make her forget how to act her age. "I feel so strange... I can hardly remember..."

Sam's hand squeezes hers just a little too tight. "Don't remember," he says, drawing her out of the shed and into the sunlight. "You don't have to be the same person, Ruby. You just have to grow up a little."

It feels as if something has snapped back into place after that. In the remaining eleven days she's only given 'time outs' twice, punnishments fair outweighed by praise. If she pouts and complains a little it doesn't matter. As long as she still does what she's told.

-

* * *

"Pride."

Dean looks up from the leather bound notebook that he's been flicking through for the thousandth time and across the bed to where Castiel sits, patiently sharpening his razor. "What?"

"Spoiled and willful," Castiel reiterates without looking up. He tests the blade against his thumb. "Ruby suffers an excess of pride."

"So that's six," Dean says, and wonders why they didn't pick it up before. "One more to go."

"I still don't like her."

"But you have the patience of a saint, angelface. You'll get over it. You know she'll be family if she can make it through number seven."

"Family are not required to like one another."

-

* * *

They pack up efficiently, used to coming and going, living out of duffel bags and their car. Ruby stands there awkwardly at first, not sure what to do or where to go so that she's not in the way. She shuffles from foot to foot until Castiel shoves a bag into her arms and points at the car. The message couldn't be clearer. Ruby earns herself a nod of approval when she doesn't complain, but carries the bag out to the car and tucks it into the boot with the others before tucking herself into the back seat.

One last sweep of the cabin to make sure that everything is where it's supposed to be and Sam locks the door. It's likely they wont come back for another couple of years, maybe more. He doesn't look back, not even when the black beauty is speeding towards civilisation and away from one of the last places on earth where there are no lies and nobody chasing them.

The only sentimentality the Winchesters need is in the car with them; In shared history and the guns they grew up with.

The trip is long, with a brief stop at a motel in between the change of drivers. There's only one room, but Ruby had begun to realise that there was almost no such thing as privacy or modesty as far as the Winchesters were concerned. Two beds and one bathroom was better than sleeping squashed in the backseat of the car with nothing even remotely resembling indoor plumbing.

She notices when Sam disappears from the bed sometime during the night but isn't awake long enough to feel it when he climbs into the bed again.

-

* * *

Sam uses a cheap prepaid phone that he bought at an all-night convenience store. He's not about to take any chances when the cops have plenty of reason to believe that Ruby is a victim of the infamous Winchesters. It's close to midnight, long after eleven, and the line rings for a long time before he hears someone pick up.

"Hello?" The voice belongs to a woman. She sounds tired, not just from sleep.

"Hi, is this the Fields residence?" Sam asks, putting on his very best sympathetic, good Christian boy voice. "My name is Sam. I saw your article in the paper a couple of weeks ago..."

"Yes." She's more awake now. The one word sounds as if she's poised between hope and despair, not sure which way to jump. "Yes, we put an article out. We posted on bulletin boards, in papers, we put it everywhere we could think of."

"I'm sorry to call so late."

"No, not at all. Do you... have some information about my Ruby?"

"Yeah. Yes. I heard... I mean, I thought I saw..." Sam clears his throat. "She was at this diner, with these two guys. At least, the girl looked a whole lot like her picture. She looked all strung out though, like she was on drugs or something. I didn't think anything of it until I saw the paper."

He gives the name of a diner he hasn't seen in a long time. It's just a few hours drive away, plausible if Sam had waited and fretted before calling. He hangs up with a smirk on his face, and tosses the phone straight into the trash.

-

* * *

Dean is lounging on the motel bed, legs crossed at the ankle, a bowl of stolen chips balanced on his lap. He's alone, for once, just him and a stolen car and a motel room that's he hasn't paid for. The night clerk is a mess on the floor behind the counter, tucked away out of sight.

He looks at the cheap phone he's picked up, then fishes out a crumpled piece of paper from his jeans. He punches in the number digit by digit, double checking before hitting the send button. Then he waits.

"Yeah," he says in answer to the person on the other end of the line. "Dean Winchester. Now - hold up there cowboy, don't get your panties in a twist. You really think I'm going to call you up on a phone you can trace?" There's a short pause. Dean rolls his eyes at what's obviously some kind of righteous 'we will find you' drivel designed to keep him on the phone for longer. "Yeah, whatever. Shut your cake hole, or I shoot the girl. She's right here with me. Ruby. You don't stop talking over me and I'll just grab my gun and pop her one with you listening in."

That's got their attention. Cops are all the same. The only difference is in what sort of names they'll call you when they try and threaten from a position that holds no authority. They know he's probably lying, but they still can't take the chance.

"See, me and my brother, we've been getting pretty antsy about all this publicity. All this name dropping, it's not good for business... so we're willing to give her up, just a little bit dented and a whole lot alive. All you've gotta do is scrape up some cash and play nice long enough to drop it off."

By now they've probably got a rough idea of his location, so Dean slides off the bed, letting the bowl of chips fall to the floor. By his count he's still got at least a minute before they manage to notify the locals. Another minute before they mobilise, and two, maybe three before they get there. But Dean still has the advantage.

"Two hundred thousand, babe. One hundred each in two separate locations. You know the drill. One bag goes to Derby -Do's Roller Rink at 346 Miller Way, the other goes to St. Elmo's Park at 200 Fairlea St. You make the drop off at six tomorrow night. If me and Sammy find your bags of cash acceptable then my boy Cas will make sure Ruby goes free." Dean ends with a smirk; "You don't want to fuck with us. Or we'll bring your whole department crashing down around your ears."

He hangs up, dropping the phone right outside the motel room door, and walks off into the night.

-

* * *

It's late, maybe early depending on your perceptions of time, and Dean has just disappeared into the night with a smirk and a cool reminder that he knows exactly what he's doing. Sam had watched from the window until his brother had walked out of sight, musing on the ins and outs of a plan that had every reason to backfire if things didn't go just right.

"Ruby..." Sam's voice purrs into her ear as he slips into the bed behind her.

"Mmm?"

"What would you do for me?" One of Sam's hands slides over her waist, inching up under her tank top to splay across her stomach. "Would you do anything for me?"

"Mm-hm," Ruby murmurs sleepily, pulling his arm up so she can snuggle against it. "Go anywhere," she says, tired and muzzy, "do anything."

"Would you kill for me, baby?"

The question wakes her up. Sam doesn't have to see her face to know that she's frowning. "I don't... I don't know," she says finally. Ruby squeezes his hand tight. It's pretty clear, he thinks, that the conversation is making her uncomfortable.

"Would you do it if I wanted you to?"

There's a long pause, long enough that Sam can easily imagine Ruby trying to work it out in her head. It's a delicate balance that they need, a place between reality and fiction. Ruby might still wind up scrapped, or as a body dragged around and kept quiet until they can find something else to put in her. The silence carries on for too long, so Sam kisses the back of her shoulder. "Don't worry about it," he says, a smile in his voice. "It's just a question. It's not life or death."

There's a small, slightly explosive noise from the other bed; Just enough like a sneeze to not quite sound like a laugh.

"Bless you," Ruby pipes up quietly.

"Deus te benedicat, Ruby," Castiel replies in a murmur from the other bed. It strikes Sam as being very odd, considering Castiel's clear views of the absent nature of God. He realises just a moment later what the blessing actually means. Blessings from an absent God, empty sentiments the night before Ruby's debut performance. Sam presses his lips against Ruby's hair and smiles with yellow eyes. God had nothing to do with the outcome.

-

* * *

They keep a careful watch on the house that Ruby's parents lived in; hidden just far enough away to never be noticed, close enough to track the movements of each officer that came and went. It was Dean who took that job, settled in for a long day of playing eye-spy while Sam took Ruby shopping in town and Castiel prowled the neighbourhoods, memorising the very best escape routes in case things went badly. Even with no intention to fail it was best to have a contingency or two.

At two in the afternoon the door to the impala opened. Dean didn't even twitch. "Well?"

"Your initial assessment is correct." Castiel slid into the front seat beside him, smelling faintly of sweat and earth.

"God bless street maps." Dean checks the time, then kicks back in the seat. "Just about four hours to go, angelface. We meet up with Sam in three."

"Three hours in the car."

Dean glances to the side enough to see blue eyes looking him up and down with a contemplative air. The green-eyed murderer smirks. "I'm watching the house here."

"I'm not. I'm watching you."

"You're getting possessive."

"Sam doesn't share Ruby, why should you share me?"

"Good question." He pauses for a beat. "Next question."

"I'm not a pet, Dean."

This time Dean looks for longer, taking in the subtle differences in posture and facial expression that go with the stubborn, righteous anger in Castiel's eyes. "No," Dean agrees finally, dry-voiced and struck by something close to resignation. "No, you're damnwell not. I gave you dad's razor, I tell you what we're planning, where we're going. No, you're not just some pet, Cas."

"Communal property."

"My God damn property." Dean realises that his hands are tight against the wheel, clenched so hard that his knuckles are turning white. It takes a conscious effort to relax his hands, to pull them away from the black beauty's wheel and let his arms drop by his sides. This is not the time, definitely not the place.

"You're getting possessive, Dean."

The smug tone makes Dean roll his eyes in disgust; "You're such a fucking tease."


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes**: You know, when I first started writing I had no intention of ending things this way. Surprise! I fooled myself too.

Don't worry, this obviously isn't the end of the series. I just feel much more comfortable writing each sub-plot as an individual story than one massive saga. Look for single snippets coming soon, and possibly a prequel.

* * *

Three hours and Ruby was having a ball. She had danced through practically every boutique on main street, trying on clothes and striking poses for Sam in the dressing room so that he wouldn't get too bored - it was only fair, considering the amount of patience he was showing while she accumulated a wardrobe larger than two sets of shirts and pants. To prove that she appreciated his efforts Ruby was on her best behaviour, rightfully interpreting the shopping spree as her reward for 'growing up' and not complaining about the long drive or the lack of cable in the motel room.

Ruby practically skips down the street, several shopping bags in one hand, the other firmly grasping Sam's forearm to help keep her balance in new boots that made her feet twice as tall as she actually was. Three inch heels used to be nothing, but after so long in nothing but bare feet or flat sandals it was strange to have any extra height.

"Ruby," Sam says, looking down at her and trusting that his imposing height would keep anyone from walking into them, "I know I said that this was your surprise, but we worked out another one."

"Another surprise?" Ruby asks. She looks up at Sam and nearly stumbles on a crack in the sidewalk, caught at the last second and steadied by his hand on her back. "I thought this was enough," she ads, holding up her shopping bags. More to the point, she thought, wasn't the idea to stop her from being so spoiled and not to encourage it?

"This one's different," Sam insists. "You have to promise me you wont freak out, OK?"

"Is it something I should freak out over?"

"No," Sam assures her quickly. "No, it's nothing to freak out over. It's just different."

"OK," Ruby agrees, readily believing anything Sam tells her. She smiles as he leads her down side streets until her feet are sore, when he just scoops her up like it's nothing. Ruby leans against his chest, listening to his heartbeat and letting the world fall away. She doesn't pay attention to where they are until Sam stops and Ruby sees the black beauty parked across the street.

She hears the doors squeak and sees Dean emerge from the driver's seat. A flash of tan, black and steel is Castiel by the boot. He tosses Dean a gun and the Winchester brothers share a grin.

"Lets get this thing done," Dean says, casually sliding the gun into the back of his jeans where it can't be seen.

-

* * *

A sudden and dangerous crackling fills the air, obnoxious static emanating from the short waves fitted to the police officers' belts. The air swamped with static electricity, pops and sparks rendering the units useless.

A behemoth of a man fills the kitchen doorway, eyes an impossible shade of bright flashing yellow. Another man appears in the space between dining and living rooms, pistol in hand and a smile on his lips; Flanked by an emotionless shadow with a shining straight razor.

"Dear Lord," Grady Fields breathes, grasping tight to his wife's hand. There was no mistaking these men, Grady had seen their pictures numerous times in the months that Ruby had been missing - two dimensions in black and white, photocopied from arrest records and CCTV recordings.

"Nice guess," Dean Winchester drawls in a voice that seems deceptively friendly, "but God isn't as pretty as we are."

An officer goes for his gun. Two things happen to him at once. The pistol swings around and fires a shot squarely into the man's chest. At the exact same moment Sam Winchester raises his left hand towards the officer and crooks his fingers. The man's neck breaks. He falls into a bleeding heap on the kitchen floor, red soaking the linoleum as the other two officers in the room stare in dumb shock.

"No guns," Sam says. "Guns aren't polite."

For a moment it doesn't register. People's necks don't just spontaneously snap. The human body doesn't move that way, even when shot in the chest by a large calibre handgun.

"Oh my God," Martha whimpers, tightening her grip on her husband's fingers. "What did you do to our daughter?"

"Nothing," Sam replies, in a voice that Martha recognises from over the phone. He sounds so trustworthy, so unlike the picture that his eyes portray. "we brought her to see you." Sam looks back over his shoulder and smiles. "You can come in now, Ruby."

And Ruby, their baby girl, suddenly squeezes her way into the kitchen under Sam's arm. She's wearing new clothes and no makeup, her hair longer than they remember, but it's definitely her. It's so shocking and wonderful to see her alive and well that it takes a few seconds to process the fact that she doesn't look the least bit scared to be in the same room as one dead body and three notorious murderers.

"Surprise, baby," Sam says to Ruby as she rushes over to hug her parents, acting as if she was only coming back after a holiday and not after having been kidnapped. "We set it up so you could say hello to your parents before we go."

"Go," Grady repeats flatly.

"You've done enough," Martha ads, her arms wrapped tightly around their baby girl. "You brought our little girl back to us. I think it's time that you leave now."

Sam shrugs. "OK," he says calmly. "If that's what you want." He turns to leave, adding over his shoulder; "We'll be waiting in the car, ok Ruby?"

"Sure," Ruby says, at the exact same time that her mother says very sharply; "What?"

Things happen very quickly after that, time moves in a manner discordant with reality.

-

* * *

The body lolls lifelessly in the back seat, eyes unfocused and pulse faint but steady. There could be blood pooling in the skull for all they know, but there's blood enough on their hands that one more slow death wont cause much alarm. It's the wasted time that's so galling, the shattered pride. It stings, salting the wounds. Pride, as they say, comes before the fall.

Sam fumes in the front passenger seat, his eyes glowing like a cat's in the darkness. The air around him smells metallic. A scent like singed hair clings to the inside of the car; Pervasive, inescapable. Not even open windows could chase the smell away.

A hand reaches for the radio dial and turns the knob only to give up when all that reaches the speakers is static. "Sam..."

"Just shut up, Dean."

The silence lasts for barely a minute before he tries again. "Look, it's not the end of the world. So she didn't take the bait, we've still got her body."

"Fuck you."

"Don't tell me you actually cared about the little bitch?"

"Dean..."

"I mean she had her moments, but it was like living with a spoiled preteen. You want a preteen, Sammy? 'Cause we can stop at any middle school you want and you can pick out some dumb cheerleader."

"Try again." Castiel voices the suggestion from the back seat, carefully keeping the Ruby-body's head from thunking against the window on a sharp turn. "Perhaps killing her parents was too much."

"The angelface is right," Dean nods to his brother. "If we try again we could start slow, arrange a mugging or something." The green-eyed murderer takes one of his hands off the steering wheel and reaches over to touch his brother's wrist. Sam's eyes blaze, then fade to a duller, more neutral colour.

"You're right," he says finally, the anger slowly draining from his body. "It was asking too much. We have the body. Dean... I want to try something else."

"Demon with a human fetish?" Dean smirks. "Have body, will travel."

Castiel shifts in the back seat, fingers flitting from the body's wrist to its neck. "She's not going to last much longer."

The body rattles a long drawn out breath to emphasise his point. For a moment the barest hint of recognition lingers in its eyes. Then the eyelids draw closed and the breath becomes shallow.

The brothers exchange glances in the front seat. This was not ideal, plans shot to pieces. "You cool with a dead host?" Dean asks.

Sam swears softly.

"Alright, necrophilia aint your style." Dean shakes his head, "We can't pull over, man. We're not far enough away from the crime scene."

"Backseat voudou," Sam says, glancing over at Castiel and the unconscious body. "This should be interesting."

The younger Winchester unbuckles his seat belt and turns, sitting sideways on the leather. One of his knees presses into Dean's thigh, the rest of him as far to the right as possible to give him adequate room to move. In the back seat, Castiel shifts his weight, manhandling the unconscious young woman who used to be Ruby into a vaguely horizontal slump against the back seat. He reaches for a cloth bag stuffed under the front seat and hands it to Sam.

The first thing Sam draws out is a bundle of herbs, closely followed by a box of wooden matches. "I can never get over," he says to himself, "the irony of performing a blessing before invoking demons."

The smell of singed hair is replaced by burning sage and angelica. Blood and oil mixes together into a pinkish mess and is smeared across the body's forehead. Three separate sigils, the largest above the third eye.

Sam does the chanting. It's him who knows the words; He has the power to give it an extra jolt. Dean just keeps driving, eyes on the road, flicking his gaze to the rearview every few seconds. The words have to be perfect, the timing precise. The final word falls from Sam's lips accompanied by a crackle of energy.

Nothing happens.

The silence carries on for a full three minutes before Sam says anything else. "Fuck."

"Demons," Dean shakes his head. "Never can trust them."

"Perhaps," Castiel says carefully, still monitoring the body's pulse. "If you didn't insist on mutilating every demon you find."

"They started it."

Suddenly the car is engulfed in blackness. The car swerves as Dean reacts with violent swearing, barely avoiding an oncoming truck. The darkness clears; Ruby's body arches in the backseat, her mouth open in a gasp that sounds like a death rattle in reverse.

"Sam Winchester," the demon in the body says. "Your accent sucks."

"You know what I summoned you for, right?" Sam asks. The atmosphere in the car is tense, wariness hanging in the air with the lingering smell of charring herbs. For the moment, at least, Sam is willing to give the demon the benefit of the doubt.

"Yes," it says eventually, resettling Ruby's body on the seat and crossing her legs. "You made your intentions clear even through that parochial accent. I'm curious, you know. You and your brother, you've made it clear that you like us as much as hunters do, so why would you summon one of us..." The demon pauses a beat, letting the words sink in, "for companionship?"

"Hey," Dean butts in impatiently, watching the differences in body language in the mirror. "You're the ones who started it."

"You seem to have a real problem with me and my brother," Sam adds, slowly stretching out his mind to feel the strength of the being inhabiting Ruby's body. It's a fairly low ranking demon, new enough in the grand scheme of things and only freshly released from Hell. Sam could send it back there if he wanted to. "Winchester Half-breed, right? Back before we ever started picking fights demons were out to kill me."

It - she - shrugs and raises one of Ruby's elegant hands to wipe the sigils from her forehead. "You're powerful," she says casually, "you're threatening. There are legends about you. Sam Winchester, Azazel's best failed plan and the boy king of Hell. None of it is true, of course, but you are something special. Half-breeds are a once in a millenia kind of thing. You could raise Lucifer, if you wanted."

"So you want to take Ruby's place as my companion?" Sam asks, bringing them back to the point. "Travel with us, kill things with us? We're exiles in both worlds. Demons hate us, hunters hate us, normal people want to see us behind bars."

"As if that would stop you." The demon smiles. It flexes the hand smeared with ritual blood and oil, looks down at Ruby's body. "Yes," she says eventually. She levels a calculated gaze at the younger Winchester. There's no trace of the girl left in the body, only the demon now. "Azazel was my father too. You can call me Ruby, Sam. I think it could be fun, being with you."

Sam smiles back. She doesn't love him, doesn't even care about him yet, but the demon is several steps closer to an equal than the other Ruby ever could have been. "Alright." Sam lets his eyes show yellow for her. "It's nice to meet you, Ruby. This is Castiel, and my brother Dean."

"Charming." Ruby's eyes flicker between black and brown. She shows no distaste for either human.

"Sweet," Dean grins, showing none of the wariness that Sam knows will be there until Ruby proves herself. "Demon girlfriend, Sammy. What did I tell you?"

"An entire ten months," Castiel observes, absently stroking his razor as he stares straight ahead through the windshield. "Completely pointless."

"Think of it as an exercise in psychology," Sam suggests."The other Ruby wasn't a complete failure."

"She was a spoiled freaking brat and you know it."

A natural silence descends on the black beauty. Its occupants keep their thoughts to themselves, alert in their strange and new company. After a moment Dean pushes a tape into the player, filling the silence with the sounds of classic rock. Ruby nods her appreciation, turning a little to look out the window at the passing scenery.

"I could live with this."

-

* * *

"There," Sam taps the spot on the map, one of the last places in the area that they hadn't yet canvassed. "Manning, Colorado."

"It's the last town, Sammy," Dean points out, flicking through their collection of maps until he finds the apropriate street directory for the township. "So if that tip turns out to be a false lead, we might as well forget about it."

"According to Dad's old journal there's a hunter there. Elkins, specialises in vampires."

"Tough shit. He'll never see us coming."

There's a noise from the other room. Sam looks out through the open door in time to watch Castiel lead a tired, mopey Ruby back into the cabin, her most recent stay in the woodshed just barely ended. Sam rolls up the map again and stands, leaving Dean sitting alone on the bed.

"We'll finish this first," he says, and they both know he means the girl. "We can come back afterwards."

"Great. If it goes to plan we got a fourth, if it all ends in shit we've got somewhere to run."

-

* * *

Two humans, a demon and a half-breed. It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke.

Dean grins. He'd always had an affinity for bad jokes.


End file.
